Tag: Square Enix

Square Enix confirms that their strategy is not working and they expose what they will do next

Square Enix has had a tough year in economic terms, earning more than ever but generating fewer profits, and they have decided to change their plans.

Square Enix has not had the best year in its history. Now that their fiscal year financial results have been published, the numbers are contradictory. The company generated 356.344 billion yen in revenue, around 2.120 billion dollars, which is a 3.8% increase compared to the previous year. The problem is that profits were 32.558 billion yen, around 193 million euros, which is a 26.6% decrease compared to the previous year.

This is explained because the increase in development costs has weighed down its profitability. They have emphasized that the revenues from Final Fantasy 16, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, Dragon Quest Monsters: The Dark Prince, and Final Fantasy VII Rebirth have performed very well, but due to development costs and the results of other games, they have not performed equally well. Especially when the releases of new free-to-play games, such as Dragon Quest Champions and Final Fantasy VII: Ever Crisis, have not managed to offset the decline in other divisions.

That is why Square Enix has announced a medium-term plan to improve its revenue. Over the next 3 fiscal years, the Japanese company will rely on four specific pillars. Which will greatly affect us as players.

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First, they want to make fewer games, but of higher quality. They will centralize their developments more, sharing resources, in order to reduce production costs. Second, they want to bet on multiplatform releases. That, along with a more aggressive attitude towards discounts on digital games, they hope to improve overall sales. Third, they want to rebuild their operations in Europe and North America, trying to achieve better results in those markets. And fourth and final, they will invest 100,000 million yen, around 595 million euros, to make strategic investments.

All this means that we should see fewer Square Enix games, but better advertised, more polished, and cheaper. Something that should be a net positive for players, as these are changes for the better, especially for the Western audience. Something that we will still have to wait to see results, as it is a three-year plan, but it will undoubtedly give us a better version of the Japanese company.

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Square is losing money hand over fist, but they have a plan to recover it

Square Enix lost $140 million last year alone on games that were abandoned halfway through, in what they’ve termed “extraordinary losses.” But don’t worry, they already know what they’re going to do.

One assumes, almost like a mantra, that a gigantic video game company with titles like ‘Final Fantasy’ or ‘Dragon Quest’ is impossible to lose money. That it always wins, always goes up, and at most one year will have less profits. And yet, reality comes to hit in the face: Square Enix lost 140 million dollars last year alone in games that were abandoned halfway, in what they have called “extraordinary losses”. But don’t worry: they already know what they are going to do.

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They are grid-like

Basically, the studio has promised investors, that entity that now decides the future of video games more than any creative, that they will make better decisions on which titles to invest money in from now on. In other words: more ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’ and fewer experiments. It’s not an exaggeration: everything seems to indicate that to recover the money in a safe value, Square is going to focus on making remakes non-stop. Of course.

According to rumors, we will see in the coming years Final Fantasy IX, ‘Final Fantasy Tactics’ and ‘Dragon Quest III HD-2D remake’ in what is becoming a trend that can easily catch on. To add even more fuel to the fire, the person in charge of the ‘Dragon Quest’ franchise left his position tired of the delays and not being able to make a game properly.

It should be added that this year’s games, apart from a couple of exceptions, have sold worse than expected, starting with ‘Final Fantasy XVI’ and continuing with ‘Forspoken’, although this is largely due to the slow adoption of PS5 by players (who, by now, will be caught by PS6). What a future we have in the gaming world: Back to the past.

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The influence of Disney on ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’. Yes, really

Were they going to ruin the first RPG of an entire generation, or on the contrary, were they going to treat it with the necessary love? Would it have extra scenes or would it become a mere senseless wandering, repeating over and over again what we already experienced in the 90s?

When they announced the remake of Final Fantasy VII, we all trembled thinking about what they would change, undoubtedly, with demonic arts. Were they going to ruin the first RPG of a whole generation or, on the contrary, were they going to treat it with the necessary love? Would it have extra scenes or would it become a mere aimless wandering, repeating over and over again what we already experienced in the 90s? Now we already know the solution, and before congratulating Naoki Hamaguchi, we should first do the same with… Disney.

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Kingdom Fantasy

You might be thinking “But this is not ‘Kingdom Hearts‘”. And you’re right. But the truth is that ‘Final Fantasy VII’ was actually inspired by ‘Beauty and the Beast’. Not the original version with Lumière and animated company in two dimensions, but the remake starring Emma Watson. Hamaguchi himself claims that the movie “impressed him a lot” because it was more or less what they had in mind.

So, taking a mythical “untouchable” product and giving it a twist to “work it in a much more realistic style”. The truth is that personally, the remake of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ seems unnecessary and a bit too dirty, but the one of ‘Final Fantasy VII’ is much more accurate, with new scenes that bring depth to the plot (and a good handful of side missions that… well, you know).

Hamaguchi, upon seeing ‘Beauty and the Beast’, was surprised to see that it was basically the same, “but the characters were shown in much more detail”. Thus, they decided to be respectful to the original, drawing on top of it and never really deviating from the path set 25 years ago. It was the only way for it to turn out well. Hey, who would have thought that seeing Cloud again would depend on Lumiere, Cogsworth, and Chip?

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Square Enix reveals all the details about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

Square Enix unveils all the details about Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, explaining everything we need to know to immerse ourselves in its world.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is very close now. With a release date set for February 29th, it’s practically among us. And as is customary at Square Enix, that means they have started bombarding us with increasingly constant information about the game. They won’t leave anything unmentioned, and we’re here to bring it to you. Because after the release of their new demo, they have shown a great deal of new content.

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To begin with, they have shown the return of several old acquaintances. Rufus, Tseng, Reno, Rude, and Roche return after making their appearance in Final Fantasy 7 Remake as part of Shinra’s forces to continue causing problems for our protagonists. From Final Fantasy 7, we also have a handful of comebacks. Bugenhagen, Johnny, and Zangan have already been introduced. The latter in an expanded role, as in the original game he only appeared in flashbacks and letters. Finally, the most surprising thing is the appearance of two characters from Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII: Cissnei and Professor Hojo. This fits with the surprising ending of Final Fantasy 7 Remake, and it will have us speculating about their role in the game until we can play it.

Stepping out of the territory of what some might consider spoilers, it seems that combat is going to expand compared to the previous installment. This time we will also have Treaties, which will teach us new abilities that we can unlock using skill points, and to obtain them we will have to complete side missions. In addition to synergy abilities, which will allow us to make synchronized attacks with two characters at the same time, as long as they fill their synergy bar first.

In addition, as we have left Midgar, they have confirmed that we have finally reached the open world part. And that means we are going to visit familiar places and others yet to be discovered. Costa Del Sol, Gongaga, Cosmo Canyon, Shinra Mansion, and Nibelheim five years ago are some of the places we can expect to go to. Although not the only ones. And how will we travel throughout this world? Well, just like in the original, we will do it either on a chocobo or on the ship of one of the characters introduced last December, Cid Highwind. Something that we will need, since exploring the world will lead us to the sanctuaries. Places where we can enhance our summons.

But what would Final Fantasy 7 be without minigames? Square Enix knows it and has revealed that there will be sixteen different minigames in the game. Some of them returning from Final Fantasy 7 Remake, others from the original Final Fantasy 7, and others completely new. Although our weakness has always been Fort Condor, we won’t lie to you.

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Although it may seem that Square Enix has revealed everything about their game, they did the same with Final Fantasy 7 Remake and it turned out to be a game full of surprises everywhere. That’s why we have faith that this won’t be a very different case. If all this has left you wanting more, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth will be released on February 29th exclusively for PlayStation 5.

You are not prepared for Final Fantasy 17: the director thinks on a radical change for the franchise

Final Fantasy XVII could represent a radical change for the franchise, as the director of Final Fantasy XVI would like a new young director to take charge of it.

Final Fantasy is a franchise that is based on always offering a twist compared to previous installments. It is the most experimental of mainstream JRPGs, if not one of the most experimental JRPGs in general. It is always trying new things, offering new perspectives, whether they are popular with fans or not. That’s why the worst Final Fantasy is always the latest one and the penultimate one was always vilified without reason; it’s the natural cycle of the saga.

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In this regard, Naoki Yoshida, director of Final Fantasy XVI, was asked in an interview at the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences if he will be the one to direct Final Fantasy XVII. Clarifying that nothing has been decided yet, he offered his perspective. In his point of view, having already worked on Final Fantasy XIV and XVI, it would be time for someone different to take the reins of the franchise. And preferably, a young director should do it.

Challenge the past to improve every game

Emphasizing that Final Fantasy has always tried to challenge what has been done before, Yoshida believes that a young director would be more capable of doing exactly that. That’s why, for Final Fantasy XVII, someone who would challenge the things he has done in Final Fantasy XVI would be the ideal choice. This is something that has happened many times in the franchise’s history, and it wouldn’t be strange for it to happen again here.

In addition, he wanted to emphasize the size that Final Fantasy has. These are games that have been in development for many years. That’s why he believes it’s important that whoever is in charge of the next installment, they must be someone with a clear and defined idea of what they want it to be even before starting the project.

In any case, all of this is just castles in the air. As Yoshida himself states, nothing has been decided yet, or at least, nothing that Square Enix wants to share with the public. Only time will tell which path Final Fantasy will take in the future and whether it will bring a radical change to the franchise or continue along the lines set by Final Fantasy XVI. Which still has a lot to offer to players.

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Square Enix announces the release date of their next game… and the fans have not taken it well

Square Enix announces the release date of its upcoming game… and fans are not happy about it, as they have announced that it uses AI to create part of its art.

Square Enix has been doing a good job with their games for a few years now. With a greater focus on their old catalog, releasing more small and medium-sized games, giving space and budget to their bigger games, they are doing interesting things. They still need to improve the marketing of their non-AAA games, but it seems like they are on the right track. Except for their marked obsession with NFTs, generative AI, and everything that causes allergic reactions in players.

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Last Tuesday, January 16th, in a post on the PlayStation blog, they revealed the release date of their upcoming game, Foamstars: February 6th. This game is a 4vs4 third-person multiplayer shooter for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 that strongly resembles Splatoon, but with a k-pop-inspired aesthetic. Something they hope will reach a different and broader audience.

The problem for Square Enix is that the game has not been well received. Because, according to the game’s producer, Kosuke Okatani, the development team has used AI-generated assets. While he has emphasized that all design aspects have been developed by humans, the reality is that some game icons and disc covers have been created through Midjourney. This can also create several problems for them in the medium and long term.

The most obvious one is that, as we have already mentioned, the public does not feel particularly excited about the idea of playing a game that uses AI-generated art. However small it may be, the public’s perspective on this type of content is becoming less favorable, and Square Enix seems to be aware of this, clarifying that 0.01% of the game’s art, or even less, is generated by AI. Which does not solve the problem at hand.

Foamstars will be released on February 6th for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. In addition, from February 6th to March 4th, all PlayStation Plus users will be able to play it for free. At least, those who are not bothered by its use of Midjourney to create game assets.

Stable Diffusion ACCESS

Square Enix starts 2024 by announcing that they are going to bet everything on AI

Takashi Kiryu, el CEO de la empresa, ha enviado una carta por Año Nuevo revelando su brillante plan: “Ser agresivos aplicando IA y otras tecnologías avanzadas tanto para el desarrollo de contenido como para nuestras funciones como editora”.

If you’re trembling with fear that AI will take away everything you want, this news won’t exactly calm your nerves. And it’s because Square Enix, the giant that this year is already preparing ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’, ‘SaGa: Emerald Beyond’ or ‘Visions of Mana’, has already announced, ignoring most of the community, that from now on it will base a large part of its business on artificial intelligence.

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F-AI-nal Fantasy

Do you remember when, in March 2023, Square Enix announced that they were making an NFT game that they haven’t released but that no one remembers anymore? Well, here it gives a similar impression, after in past New Years they claimed it was the turn of the metaverse and blockchain: whatever is trendy at that moment. Takashi Kiryu, the CEO of the company, has sent a New Year’s letter revealing his brilliant plan: “To be aggressive in applying AI and other advanced technologies both for content development and for our functions as a publisher.”

AI can help a lot in certain parts of a job and make categorization or summaries less tedious, but when it comes down to it, most bosses hear “Fewer artists to hire!”. “It has the potential not only to change what we create, but also to change the processes by which we create, including programming.” Square’s programmers are feeling very calm right now.

Kiryu continued in the letter, “In the short term, our goal will be to increase our productivity as developers and achieve greater sophistication in our marketing efforts. In the long term, we hope to elevate those technologies to create new content for consumers, because we believe that technological innovation represents business opportunities“. Business, money, bills. In the end, it is clear what the main concern is, right?

Come on, if what you wanted was even more games even more narratively vague than ‘Final Fantasy VII Remake’, you’re in luck. What a gamer future awaits us.

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Dragon Quest Tact, the game that almost landed Yuji Naka in jail, is closing its doors

Dragon Quest Tact, the game that almost landed Yuji Naka in jail, is closing its doors, at least in regards to the West, as it continues in Japan

Everyone wants to join the games as a service because they provide lucrative benefits. What few want to accept is that they are also a risky market. The audience is volatile, they always navigate legal limits, and government changes can end plans that have been in the works for years in just a few months. That’s why it shouldn’t surprise us that so many games of this kind fail. Even when some big creators almost end up in jail because of them.

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The latest game that has announced its closure is Dragon Quest Tact. An RPG by Square Enix, a spinoff of the Dragon Quest franchise, that allows us to create a team of monsters to battle. All of this with gacha mechanics.

The game will close on February 29, 2024, just over three years after its global launch on January 27, 2021. The reasons given by its developers for this decision have been a radical change in consumer trends, which makes it difficult to continue maintaining the game. However, this only applies to the international version. The Japanese version of the game will continue to operate as usual, receiving support from the studio.

While it is true that Dragon Quest Tact has not made much noise in the West, it has been in the news for an incident related to the game itself: it was part of an insider trading offense. Yuji Naka, co-creator of Sonic, used his knowledge about the game to, along with two other former Square Enix employees, buy 162,000 shares of Square Enix before the game’s announcement. All of this with the expectation that their price would increase and they could be sold at a much higher price.

The move didn’t go very well. Yuji Naka had to go to trial, where he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and fined 1.2 million dollars. And while the prison sentence was suspended, the fine was not. Something that seems to foreshadow the future of Dragon Quest Tact.

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If you need a summary of Final Fantasy VII Remake ahead of its sequel, Square Enix has your back

If you need a summary of Final Fantasy VII Remake ahead of its sequel, Square Enix has your back with a video that summarizes its entire story

Publishing a story in multiple volumes poses the problem of making it difficult to follow. If several years pass between each volume, it’s easy to forget key parts necessary to understand the whole story. Subsequent volumes. That’s why serialized stories have their issues, despite their charms. It’s a problem that Square Enix hasn’t wanted to deal with, opting for a simple and direct decision: creating a summary for those who want it.

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Square Enix has released a video summarizing the story of Final Fantasy VII Remake in just five minutes. Why? Because many people might have some key moments a bit fuzzy in their memory. Not for nothing, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, its sequel, is coming out in just over three months.

Narrated by Red XIII, it uses footage from the original game to explain the events of Final Fantasy VII Remake for those who need a refresher, or even for those who haven’t played the game. But the beauty of it is that we won’t just be able to watch it on YouTube, on the Final Fantasy channel, it will also be included within Final Fantasy VII Rebirth itself. That way, those in need of a brief reminder before diving in can take it as a little appetizer. A welcomed refreshment for their memory.

All of this is part of the preparations for Rebirth that Motomu Toriyama, the co-director of the game, stated would be introduced for those who haven’t played the first part. In addition to this summary video, they’ve also included the Active and Classic battle modes, allowing players to choose between the gameplay style of the Remake and that of the original game. Moreover, there’s a new Dynamic difficulty mode that will automatically scale difficulty based on the player’s skill level.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is set to be released on February 29, 2024, exclusively—presumably temporarily—for PlayStation 5. Until then, you can enjoy Final Fantasy VII Remake on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.

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We already know all the details about Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis for PC

We already know all the details of Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis for PC, except perhaps the most important: whether it will have all the content of the original

Final Fantasy VII is a game that refuses to fade away. Adding more and more versions to the original story, there’s practically a Final Fantasy VII for each person. And that’s alright. It’s a cult classic, deeply cherished by gamers, and each version brings changes substantial enough to justify its existence. Even if it comes in the form of a gacha game.

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That’s the case with Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis, which has been with us since September 7th, available for iOS and Android. Nominated as the best mobile game in The Game Awards, Square Enix promised us a PC version. And now, finally, it has a Steam page.

While it still lacks a release date, only showing “Coming Soon,” the page reveals what we can expect from this version. It includes several screenshots and a new trailer, showcasing a notable leap in graphical quality compared to the mobile versions. However, there’s no indication here that the game will include any of the additions made post-launch on mobile. Hence, it remains to be seen if the events that have been regularly released will make their appearance in the game.

On another note, it seems that the game will include a couple of options not present in the mobile platforms. Alongside a cross-platform multiplayer feature, allowing us to play with other users on Android or iOS, the game will feature Steam achievements, providing an incentive for many to play it on the platform.

Thanks to Steam, we also know its requirements, with the minimum specs outlined as follows:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 64-bit / Windows® 11
  • Processor: AMD A8-7600 / Intel® Core™ i3-3210
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon™ Vega 8 Graphics / Intel® UHD Graphics 630 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 750
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 30 GB available space
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The recommended specifications for Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis on PC would be as follows:

  • Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
  • OS: Windows® 10 64-bit / Windows® 11
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 3 1200 / Intel® Core™ i5-6400
  • Memory: 8 GB RAM
  • Graphics: AMD Radeon™ RX 460 / Intel® Arc™ A380 / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 950
  • DirectX: Version 11
  • Network: Broadband Internet connection
  • Storage: 30 GB available space

While the PC version of Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis doesn’t have a set release date yet, the Android and iOS versions are already available. So, if you’re eager to start playing, you have no excuse not to jump in right away!